![]() "If you want to go to the roots, you have to meet a Samaritan," I once heard him explain to a group of British Jews. He's 73 years old, with a tan complexion and a thin white mustache framing a gap-toothed grin. He speaks in oratorical English with a singsong Israeli accent, cracking jokes about the poor sheep sacrificed on Passover and complimenting his female guests on their beauty. Benny is also editor of a Samaritan community newspaper and a one-man foreign ministry, hosting dignitaries and giving lectures around the world about his community. He introduces himself as a 125th-generation Samaritan.īenny is a prolific author on Samaritan traditions and published the first English translation of the Samaritan Torah, which differs slightly from the Jewish version in thousands of instances. NPR Benyamim "Benny" Tsedaka is a prolific author on Samaritan traditions. Benny has a second home on the mountain, and we were quickly shepherded into his living room, just like many other diplomats, journalists, academics and curiosity seekers. I first met Benny 10 years ago on a trip with friends to the Samaritans' West Bank village, perched on Mount Gerizim overlooking Nablus. The search would take us deep into the illicit artifact trade, where ancient manuscripts have more than just spiritual value. The hunt would eventually beckon me, too. Benny didn't know it then, but he would soon embark on a years-long international hunt for the missing Torahs. Some 30 miles southwest, a Samaritan named Benyamim Tsedaka - everyone calls him Benny - left his home in Israel and drove straight to the West Bank, to the scene of the crime. These manuscripts are the Samaritans' most jealously guarded possessions, and collectors across the globe have gone to great lengths to get their hands on them. Of the three dozen old biblical manuscripts left in the community's coffers, the Samaritans say one is the oldest in the world, written by Moses' great-grandnephew. If the Samaritans are the true keepers of the biblical faith, their Torahs are title deeds: rare and sacred manuscripts, written in a variation of the original Israelite script that Jews abandoned long ago and featuring passages scholars say preserve some of the earliest drafts of the Bible. Women are kept apart from others when menstruating in adherence with ritual purity, and men sacrifice sheep each year on Passover, a biblical commandment Jews gave up millennia ago. The Samaritans trace their roots to the ancient Israelites and regard themselves as the most loyal followers of the word of God as transmitted to Moses. ![]() (Right) Ruins on top of Mount Gerizim, just before sunrise. (Left) Carpets were placed on the mountain during the pilgrimage. Tanya Habjouqa/Noor Images for NPR (Top) Samaritans gather for a sunrise pilgrimage to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. Centuries ago, it numbered more than 1 million today, according to the last count, there are only 810 Samaritans left. Known from the New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, the group has barely survived. And they belonged not to Jews but to the Samaritans, one of the world's oldest and tiniest religious sects. They were perhaps the most ancient Torahs stolen in the Holy Land since the Crusaders pillaged Jerusalem. The thief or thieves snatched the manuscripts, escaped through the synagogue's arched doorway, discarded the copper case in a stairwell, and vanished. The other was a codex, a thick book, probably from the 15th century and bound in a maroon leather cover. One was a sheepskin scroll written around 1360 and kept in a slender copper case. Inside were two handwritten copies of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. The thief - maybe it was a band of thieves - crossed the carpeted sanctuary, pulled back a heavy velvet curtain, and opened a carved wooden ark. Before dawn on March 21, 1995, someone broke into a synagogue in the Palestinian city of Nablus. ![]()
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